Engaging students in an online learning environment can be a challenging task! Formative assessment activities and feedback mechanisms form an integral part of all online distance learning courses developed through the Distance Learning Unit at Leeds Beckett University. Academic Instructional Designers from the Unit work closely with Course Teams to design, develop and deliver innovative activities to engage and motivate students from a broad range of both undergraduate and post-graduate degree programmes.

This practical session will look at how the principles of good online learning design can be used to create formative assessment activities that will help to address some of the challenges of student engagement. Key areas for discussion will include strategies for building and maintaining an inclusive online learning community, how to design and manage online group work successfully, effective approaches for providing feedback to students and how formative assessment activities can be used to provide the scaffold for summative assessment.

A range of formative assessment activities will be presented from Leeds Beckett Distance Learning Courses using a wide range Blackboard tools.